More Leading Local Broadcasters Join Consortium; Broad Deployment of TIP Airing Report; Sets 2020 Goals
NEW YORK — The TV Interface Practices (TIP) Initiative, the media industry group promoting open interfaces to streamline local broadcast TV advertising transactions, announced several new developments as systems providers begin delivering economic benefits to buyers and sellers through increased automation. The TIP Initiative is focused on increasing access between system providers, streamlining the ad buying experience, and materially reducing transactional burdens facing agencies and television stations. Since its last update, the initiative has significantly expanded its membership and supported several system providers in deploying TIP interfaces, resulting in positive business outcomes.
The TV Interface Practices (TIP) Initiative expands its membership and gains momentum in streamlining automated local TV advertising transactions.
Kathy Doyle, EVP, Managing Partner, Local Investment at MAGNA Global commented, “Increasing transaction efficiency is one of the pillars for maintaining a healthy ecosystem for advertisers, ad buyers and local television broadcasters. As a key agency partner of the broadcasters we applaud accelerated media transactions and the TIP Initiative’s goals.”
Expanded TIP Membership
Leading broadcasters E.W. Scripps, Fox Television Stations and Graham Media Group, which collectively own or operate 95 local broadcast stations across 65 markets, have joined founding members Gray Television, Hearst Television, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations and Telemundo, Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and TEGNA Inc. in the TIP Initiative. The consortium now represents more than 740 local broadcast television stations.
Tom Fleming, SVP Sales at Fox Television Stations commented, “It makes good business sense to support the TIP vision of open standards and streamlined transaction flow, and we plan to use TIP-compliance as a decision criteria for managing our operations in 2020.”
TIP Implementation Milestone
System providers are successfully deploying TIP interfaces resulting in positive business outcomes for their clients including next-day delivery reporting to agencies, reducing time spent reconciling invoices, and enabling broadcasters to correct the scheduling of commercial units before they air. The widespread deployment of the TIP Logtimes interface is supported by over a dozen system providers working for buyers and sellers in the local ecosystem.
Earlier in 2019, the consortium launched the TIP Initiative’s code repository for vendors to co-develop APIs that reflect the TIP Framework. The work is publicly available at tvb.org/TIP and will be foundational in moving TIP interface designs closer to implementation.
Trading Partner Forum Affirms Automation Objectives
“As trading partners, it is important to synchronize the automation changes we plan to make in 2020 by continuing to share our automation goals and priorities,” commented Brett Jenkins, CTO at Nexstar.
In December 2019, the TIP Trading Partner Forum, a group of forty standards-supporting broadcasters and leading media and advertising agencies, affirmed their automation priorities for 2020. The overarching theme was a renewed commitment to greater transparency of automation deployment roadmaps between agencies and broadcasters to better synchronize goal setting across the ecosystem.
Focused TIP Goals In 2020
The TIP Initiative has outlined a set of focused 2020 goals that were confirmed by the Trading Partner Forum:
- Continue to support the ecosystem with the ongoing widespread deployment of Logtimes interface including updates, documentation and testing support,
- Support the piloting of additional interfaces including Inventory Avails, RFP, Proposal, Commercial Instructions, and Invoices,
- Recommend how local Video, OTT and Addressable can be further incorporated in the TIP standards to support their continued growth.
“The industry is nearing the tipping-point regarding next-day Logtimes use. TEGNA plans to make our Logtimes feed available to more than a thousand agencies we do business with, and onboard any agency that is ready to participate in 2020,” said Kurt Rao, CTO at TEGNA Inc.
Get on board with TIP
TIP members are calling for increased industry participation so that more trading partners can transition to the new interfaces. If your company (buy- and sell-side) is interested in testing and adopting TIP standards to help advance local broadcast automation, please contact the tipinitiative@frontrowadvisory.com. Information about TIP and the open framework is available to all at tvb.org/TIP.
About TIP Initiative
The TV Interface Practices (TIP) Initiative is a consortium of local television broadcasters including E.W. Scripps, Fox Television Stations, Graham Media Group, Gray Television, Hearst Television, NBCUniversal Owned Television and Telemundo Stations, Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and TEGNA Inc. TIP is an industry work group dedicated to promoting open interfaces to streamline advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agency partners.
